Confucius said, "A student should not be taught unless he is anxious to understand what he does not understand, and should not be enlightened unless he is eager to express what he cannot express. If he is shown one corner of a square and cannot infer the other three, the teaching will not be repeated." (Wangdao 165).
The saying comes from the section in my book called "On Teaching and Learning," a fitting place to begin. As this is an experiment, I do have an hypothesis. I can see where this could greatly apply to my language courses that start tomorrow. I am interested to see the 'express what he cannot express' part take shape in the upcoming week. I find that listening to people speak in their native tongue (whether or not it's your language), requires a good deal of 'inferring the other three corners of a square' in order to understand. In this sense, especially since the majority of my classmates are not native English speakers and my teacher will only be speaking in Chinese, I can definitely see how I might be doing a lot of inferring. I hope to! Overall, I am anxious and eager, and I hope that I won't forget it. It seems that as long as I keep a constant reminder for myself, that I might be able to infer the three corners and think outside the box.
